Microsoft quietly released its own Android launcher more than two years ago. It was the basic, functional Arrow Launcher for Android devices, built by an employee as part of the company’s Garage experiment. That experiment is getting a big upgrade today with the release of Microsoft Launcher.
New features in Microsoft Launcher for Android include:
- The Feed — Info at your Fingertips. With just a quick swipe-to-the-right, Microsoft Launcher offers a tailored feed of your important events, top news, recent activities, favorite people and most frequently used apps.
- Beautiful and customizable — Launcher has wide-ranging ways to let you personalize your phone, it’s easy to set colors of backgrounds, and new “gesture” support will let even hard-core customizers create the environment that makes them most productive.
- Continue on PC — And of course, Microsoft Launcher has been designed to make it easy for you to continue what you’re working on seamlessly — whether it’s photos, documents and more — on your PC
The Feed is also very impressive. Fully customizable, the Feed shows you the recent activities, latest news, calendar events, contact information, weather, and it even has a delightful greeting for you based on the time of day. Users can set the background to be translucent, dark, or light themed with customizable colors like accent colors in Windows 10.
The Microsoft Launcher for Android is fast, and those who already use Arrow will be very familiar with the layout and settings. Users can still customize the grid, swap out icon packs, log into their Microsoft Accounts, back up and restore, disable animations, and more, which makes the launcher very much your own.